Defender rear crossmember

[Mikey0211]

I have just spent the afternoon cutting the ends of the rear crossmember as the previous owner was mabey a bit too lazy to fix the problem, so he just got a bit more plate and covered over the ends..

Ive cut away the ends flush with the chassis and am now looking into replacing the ends, Can you buy the ends as a set and weld them on.. (are they avaliable?) or has anyone made custom ones or even a whole custom rear bar for that matter?...


Here is what it was like, with the bit of plate over the top

[BilboBoggles]

Only issue I see is - Don't you have to seam weld along the top side of the chassis rail, and to get to that , don't you have to pull the tub off?

I've seen the rear cross member sold as a complete unit that you weld onto the center rails, and I think RovaCraft sell them.

[Mikey0211]

Don't particulary want a whole crossmember as the main part of mine is in great condition...

There is about 15mm of gap inbetween the ends and the tub, more than enough to sneak in there and weld the top section..


I am tossing up with the idea of making up some kind of full rear bar that just bolts onto the chassi rails and crossmember..

Short of that it wont be hard to fab up the ends my self, just wondering if anyone else had done something similar,.

[MacFamily]

Have a read of Tim's thread Mikey if you havent seen it already http://www.aulro.com/afvb/projects-t...r-scratch.html

[Mikey0211]

Thanks aaron, I hadn't seen that thread before. he did a real nice job though, may well be worth removing the whole lot and starting from scratch.

[lardy]

if you remove the whole thing dont you have to have the chassis in a jig to stop the thing from warping, i think the centre cesction is a valuable part of the chassis integrity

[Shonky]

if you remove the whole thing dont you have to have the chassis in a jig to stop the thing from warping, i think the centre cesction is a valuable part of the chassis integrity

Welding on new ends shouldn't provide a lot of torsional force.

You don't neccisarily need it in a jig either - I completely replaced the rear member on my Series II without a jig, and by taking it slowly and carefully avoided any warping.

Just gotta go gently!

[incisor]

i keyed my outriggers to give them some support as there isnt anywhere near enough when you flush cut them imho.

i bought a good 2nd crossmember and cut the outriggers off to match what i did with the existing unit.

imho you are much better served if you can get away with leaving the chassis rail section intact.

the thread is http://www.aulro.com/afvb/isuzu-land...ys-effort.html

[Mikey0211]

Finished the crossmember this morning...

Fabed up new ends from 6mm plate and strengthened it from behind with gussets from the ends back into the chassis....

I'm quite happy with the end result and it looks a hell of alot neater than the old one,,,

Total time was bout 2.5hrs yesterday making the ends and fitting them an about 1hr thismorning cleaning up and painting...

[cal415]

Looks good, much neater.... one thing though, i found ALOT more rust after i removed the centre section of the cross member especially in the ends of the chassis rails, and you outer sections looked even worse then mine.... What i have gone with for mine is a i had a bit of 5mm flat plate folded in to a c section then we shaped up the sides, we are making up a custom tow setup and some heavy duty recovery points, its going to have some more 5mm plate backing in some sections bringing it to 10mm thick(behind recovery points) and 6 and 8mm plate for gussets, when we cut the old one off we left the fuel tank supports in which is enough to brace the chassis even if it did warp a little i doubt it would cause any problem considering rover manufacturing tollerances!